Grief and anger in gun-swamped America: The fight to bury arms

Activists and demonstrators began gathering in front of the White House Friday evening even before the little children slaughtered in the Connecticut school shooting had been identified. Holding up lit candles, they angrily chanted “Today is the Day” as they sought stricter gun control laws after yet another senseless school massacre in a country awash with gun violence.

The chant was an angry rebuff to a misplaced — and perhaps misconstrued — remark just hours earlier by White House press secretary Jay Carney, who, when asked about Obama’s campaign promise to renew the ban on assault weapons, said ”today is not the day to engage in the usual Washington policy debates…that day will come.” But as pain and anger coursed through America in the hours after the horrific carnage, attention turned towards the liberal President, who critics say has not displayed any sense of urgency or passion on gun control issues, notwithstanding his emotional reaction to the carnage.

The bodies of the slaughtered children were still being retrieved when the visibly distraught President appeared on television to issue a statement on the heart-wrenching bloodbath. “The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful, little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers, men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams,” the father of two young daughters said, voice choked with grief.

“So our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost,” he continued, pausing to regain composure and seemingly wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors, as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early and there are no words that will ease their pain.”

Across the country, such grief and anguish preceded anger. A family friend of this correspondent, who lives less than ten miles from the site of the tragedy in Connecticut, was driving down to Washington DC when she began listening heartbreaking radio broadcasts on the carnage. Eventually, she pulled over to a rest stop and wept her heart out.

Indeed, all of America cried in a way it hadn’t since 9/11 or the Challenger disaster, although there have been massacres since. None involved children — of such tender age and innocence — on this scale.

But there were no immediate answers to why Washington had not enacted severe gun control laws despite multiple massacres. Instead, there was the usual hedging. “As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it is an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a (Sikh) temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children,” Obama said, vaguely adding, ”We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

At the heart of the debate is the country’s Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — which is the cornerstone of the conservative principle of individual liberty, based on the long tradition of hunting and self-defense. So ingrained is the principle in the nation’s psyche, particularly in Middle America, that even Obama swears by it.

But the flipside of the runaway interpretation of the Second Amendment by the conservative movement is that it has put more and more sophisticated weapons on the streets, arms that were never really meant for the woods. Efforts to outlaw these weapons have been spotty because even Democratic lawmakers in heartland America believe they will lose votes if they push too hard on the subject since conservatives believe it will be the first step to ban all guns.

Friday’s massacre of children at the Connecticut elementary school may have killed that fear. There is growing acknowledgement that American Talibanists have pushed the defense of a right, which was enacted in 1791, a bit too far in the 21st century.